


I See You At The Corners

by Legendaerie



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Body Horror, Ghosts, Hauntings, M/M, No One New Dies... For Now, PTSD, Pre-existing Character Death, spooky stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 07:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1810135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, living is worse.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <i>He can’t shake himself of the smell - it’s lingering like a disease, like a residue. He can’t smell anything on his body but charred flesh. Not the stench of sweat, of horse, of shit or dust or leather. It’s always there. A sinister undercurrent reminding him of that long, bloodstained day. There's no use in pointing it out to anyone else, either; they either don't notice or they don't want to talk about it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	I See You At The Corners

**Author's Note:**

> originally inspired by [this post](http://lostlegendaerie.tumblr.com/post/75712641401/oh-god-but-what-if-jeanmarco-au-where-marco-haunts) and then [i did the thing](http://thisismouseface.tumblr.com/post/75739838729/i-see-you-at-the-corners)
> 
> cleaned it up a bit, may continue at a later date

It starts gently.

It starts a couple of days after the battle for Trost, when they’re outside cleaning the fort as part of ‘initiation’ or something. It starts with just a faint scent of smoke on the wind that he thinks is just the signal flares. But there’s not a trace of color in the sky, and Jean takes a deeper breath.

Then the smell hits him, and he wants to gag. It's blood, it's decay, it's fire and smoke and melting flesh, and he wishes he didn't recognise it from experience. Moments later he’s on his knees, choking on air.

Reiner is the first to notice, slapping him lightly between the shoulders and asking, “Jean?”

"Can’t you smell that?" he hacks between breaths.

"Smell what?"

"It’s like," Jean coughs, "it smells like a funeral pyre. What… don’t you notice?"

Then the wind picks up and the scent is gone, but still - no one else says anything. Jean wipes off the back of his mouth, spits a couple times for good measure, and stands. He doesn’t like the look that’s being passed around by his squad members.

Suspicion. Confusion. Pity.

He’d swallow, but his mouth’s too dry. “You guys didn’t smell that?”

"Probably just the cooking fires!" Connie covers, laughing and approaching Jean with a grin.  "Geez, and I thought Sasha had a keen sense of smell."

Jean breaks out of his attempted hug with a jerky movement, skittering to the side like a startled animal.  But the moment's passed, and the attention of their group has passed on to the next thing which just so happens to be Sasha pointing out she can indeed smell food.

No one brings it up again.

* * *

 

A few days later, it’s Jean's turn for the showers - a loose term, since it’s hardly more than a bucket of hot soapy water in an outhouse, but it works and it cleans. Safe in solitude, he dips the coarse brush in the fluid, swishing it around to try and get the hairs and germs of the previous person off, and proceeds to scour his own flesh raw.

He can’t shake himself of the smell - it’s lingering like a disease, like a residue. He can’t smell anything on his body but charred flesh. Not the stench of sweat, of horse, of shit or dust or leather. It’s always there. A sinister undercurrent reminding him of that long, bloodstained day. There's no use in pointing it out to anyone else, either; they either don't notice or they don't want to talk about it.

He scrubs harder, through his hair, nearly ripping it out at the roots. There has to be some place on his body he hasn’t cleaned enough. There has to be some logical reason for this lingering sentiment. If he can just, just understand what's going on then maybe he could--

"Oi!"

A pounded fist - or maybe a kick from a boot - on the door snaps Jean out of his cleaning trance, and he nearly knocks over the bucket.

"Wait, I’m not done!" Jean yelps, scrabbling to wrap one of the towels off the hook and wrap it around his body, feet slapping on the wet wood.

"Yes, you are. Time’s up, horse shit." And the Captain himself opens the door, revealing a short queue behind him. "Get out."

Jean hisses a curse under his teeth as he hauls his ass out of there, hair still damp and loosely holding the towel around his waist. His skin is red, raw, visibly so - and Levi’s hand clamps around his wrist as he tries to escape.

"Whats wrong, horse shit?" The name doesn't even sound that biting, compared to how Jean's heard him speak before. Beady dark eyes squint up at him, nose wrinkling. "Get too distracted beating off to get properly clean? You reek."

Levi’s scowl tenses for a moment as he studies Jean’s skin, then he releases him. Jean reels backwards, jaw locked tight with anger, but he scrambles back to the fort with only a couple laughing taunts from the older squad members on his heels.

It’s not until he’s dropped his towel and is struggling into his clothes that he notices he’s been followed.

"—Shit!"

Jean releases his grip on his pants as they’re hanging around his thighs, trying desperately to decide whether he should keep trying to get dressed or salute the Captain, who seems completely unfazed by his nudity.

"Why is your skin so raw, Kirstein?" Levi asks, standing in the doorway with the kind of dress-parade perfection that just seems to come to him by instinct. It makes Jean feel even less like a proper soldier, if at all possible.

"I—" he gulps, hands covering his junk as he shivers, "I didn’t feel clean enough, sir?"

"Why? And stop hopping around like an idiot and put your fucking pants on."

Jean complies, half turning away out of habit as he pulls his clothes up and tries to rationalize his sentiment. “It’s-- it’s the smell, sir.”

"The smell?"

He doesn't really feel like explaining it - especially not to his superior - but then Levi continues.

"You still smell the bodies, don't you?"

His heart thuds in his chest, pulse stalling and stumbling, and Jean turns around with gold eyes wide. But Levi’s already turning away, closing the door behind him.

"You’ll never wash it off, Kirstein. No matter how hard you try."

 

* * *

 

It’s after the first expedition beyond the walls that things start getting worse.

Everyone's tired, and emotional, and exhausted, but he's quietly oddly grateful there aren't any bodies to burn this time.  At least, there won't be tonight; come morning, some of the injured are doomed to pass away.  Jean almost wishes he'd have the same luxury of dying in his sleep, but he knows enough about war by now to know their passing will be far from painless and peaceful.

After passing out as soon as he hit the sheets, he wakes up with a start to total darkness. His mind is still foggy with sleep but his is heart pounding, his muscles tense and locked around his bones like chains. It’s in this state that he hears the whisper.

_'Jean…'_

It’s breathy, faint, warm and smoky like the last breath of a candle and he doesn’t want to move. Something flickers in the corner of his vision, and Jean’s head whips around so fast that his neck hurts. But there’s nothing there.

Nothing he sees, at least. But he feels it, latent and shadowy.

His heart is pounding but he lays down, screws his eyes shut and tries to will himself to go back to sleep. If he can just make it to daylight, somehow, everything will be fine. But then he feels it - a cool, pricking sensation, creeping down his arm where it’s clutching the sheets.

Jean shakes his hand and throws the sheets up to his neck, pretending it was just a spider or something. He’s still too terrified to look, and slowly sinks back into unconsciousness to the sounds of his sleeping roommates.

 

* * *

 

Training is rough the next morning; hours of riding on horseback has left every muscle in his body stiff. His horse had thrown him twice, rearing up and eyes rolling white with terror. Hanji had tried to explain that the beasts could smell fear, but Jean thinks they could smell death.

He's getting used to the scent. He eats a dinner where everything tastes faintly like burned rotting meat and he keeps it down. Jean excuses himself early and retires to bed, hoping that if he could get to sleep while his friends were still up and talking it might keep the darkness away.

It works, for a little bit.

Then something runs through his hair and he jerks awake, gasping. It's back, the feeling, the shadow. He's not alone. He's not safe.

The room is cast in red light and it’s like a funeral pyre again - the smell of smoke, the reek of burning flesh, and he swears he sees flames licking at the foot of his bed. He chokes back a scream, yanking his limbs closer to his body. A hand waves into view, weakly clawing at the sheets--

"Geez, Jean," grumbles Connie from the bunk above him, "can you keep it down? It’s not even sunrise."

Jean throws the covers off his body, shoves his feet into his boots, and storms out the bedroom. He's given up on sleeping for now, and he may as well get an early start on training.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t stop.

The night before their mission in Sina, Jean wakes to the scent of burned bones and opens his eyes into a nightmare. A shape is crouching at the foot of his bed, bent over, with a whispering voice like the wind through leaves.

_'Jean…'_

He gags, scrambling to sit up as it uncurls into a shape and crawls up his bed - and he can’t get away, can’t look away, as the charred character breathes hot smoke into Jean’s open mouth. It’s smoking and broken like a defeated titan, but it’s still moving.

One side of its body is missing - little charred chips of bone fall onto Jean's sheets, flaking off the broken edges of the remains of the right side.

He knows the shadow's name.

"Marco," he sobs, not from pain and loss but from terror, "why?"

It runs the tips of its hand down his neck, and he shudders under the dead touch - then his chest seized in agony as the hand is plunged into his flesh with a crunch.

'Your heart,' it hisses between the shattered remains of teeth, leaning in close to his face. His heartbeat is going out of control, bursting with pain as the hand locks its grip around the organ, squeezing until—

He wakes up for real with the sheets soaked with sweat, but all he can smell is Marco.

 

* * *

 

"What do you want from me?"

It’s a groan, a sob, as he’s trapped in the nightmare again, clamped down against the mattress by more burned, smoking hands as Marco, intact and rotting with seared flesh and half a floppy smile leans over him, dripping blood onto Jean’s face.

_'I miss you,'_ the ghost, the nightmare, the terror croons, voice a croak as it straddles Jean, hand around his throat and squeezing. For a moment Jean thinks this is the end, thinks he's going to suffocate, and he welcomes it even if it's at the hands of his best friend.  Because he'd be at peace then.

"Jean?"

He chokes in a breath like he’s surfacing from a pond, tears still hot and burning on his cheeks as Armin leans over him, face open with concern.  He's awake, and should feel relieved.  But he's not.

"Jean, what’s wrong?"

"Nothing," Jean mutters, but he doesn’t lay back down against the pillow, avoiding Armin’s gaze as he scans the moonlit sheets for evidence of blood. But of course there’s nothing, and he pushes the blond away. "I’m gonna go get something to drink."

Downstairs, in the belly of the fortress, the candles are guttering low over the mess tables. When Jean sees a figure already seat down there, dark hair gleaming in the low light, he freezes.

"Mar—"

Then the figure turns, casting a lazy glance over his shoulder.

"I figured you’d be here sooner, horse shit," grunts Levi. Jean salutes absently, his form terrible, but approaches Levi cautiously.

"Why?"

"Your nightmares."

This takes Jean off guard, and he relaxes around the diminutive captain.  “So, you’ve had them, then?”

Levi blinks and turns back to his own drink, taking a sip of tea. It shouldn't be an answer, but it is.  He almost smiles.  Someone else has gone through this and survived; surely, there must be a solution.

"What stops them, then? Do I hunt down the titan that killed him? What," and his relief is starting to go cold the longer he stands to Levi’s side, "what do I… how do I stop them?"

"You don’t."

Levi looks up, eyes grey like smoke, like ashes of comrades.

"You just get used to them."

 

* * *

 

Jean puts off going to bed that night, despite the ache in his muscles that resonates down to his bones; because he knows what’s going to happen the moment he closes his eyes. The smell has been strong all day, too strong for him to eat anything, flavoring the tea Hanji served him instead with a knowing look.

So when he lays down and immediately feels the sticky damp breath ghost over his face, breathes in the odor of titan vomit and death, he doesn’t ask why.

"I missed you too," he lies, and accepts the weight beside him as his burden to bear.

 

 


End file.
